The Runners High
“What the hell was that?” Breathless, I sat beside Spring as we got into the car. Spring spoke but there was a dull ringing in my ears that muted her voice. Eventually I heard her say “something got into you eh? You just took off, how long were you waiting for me at the end?”. We drove home and pulled into our driveway. Spring got out, she noticed that I wasn’t following and asked “Are you coming?”. I responded “In a few minutes”. I needed to understand what had happened. Where my mind had gone. Before distractions dulled this experience and reduced it to something imagined at a later point in the day. Like a dream, precisely like a dream to be exact, I needed to not let this memory fade into the ether now that I had regained composure, regained consciousness. I looked at the running app on my phone. I had run the fastest split time for that distance in my life, at least 25% faster than when I had ran the same trail and distance a few days prior. I rejoined Spring in our apartment; “I think that was it” I said, “I think that was a runners high”. This experience happened some months ago. In the period between then and now I have battled with whether I should write about it or not. I’ve written drafts of this post and then scrapped them. I’m skeptical by nature. I spend my leisure time in the mountains and take calculated risks. The key point is that these activities require me to be calculated, to evaluate the hard evidence, to mitigate dangers and to move safely through the terrain. There’s no room there for flights of fancy or the unquantifiable. I like the raw honesty of the wild and the trust I can put in those experiences. Rock is hard, Ice is cold and the Mountains are eternally indifferent. I’ve heard of climbers refer to being in “the zone” but it always sounded foolish to me. Nobody plans a trip and says “ok, when we get to the base of this climb we’ll enter The Zone and then climb effortlessly to the summit”. It sounds farcical. The sporadic nature of accounts about this heightened state of awareness naturally leads one to be skeptical. Yet I couldn’t deny my own experience. That state I was in while running was not normal consciousness, it was not a normal level of awareness. It was different. I’d read about the purported “runners high” before. It always seemed like marketing fluff to sell more race tickets or running shoes. Or just another way...
Early Season Ice Climbing
Since our week long trip to Canmore last Winter, Ice Climbing has become a passion of ours. This past season has seen us put a lot more effort into Climbing in general. Climbing is not just a full body sport, it’s a full everything sport. It’s physical, mental and emotional. It’s the perfect activity in my opinion. I can understand why people give up everything to live in a van and climb full time as a dirtbag. Climbing gives you almost everything you need to feel a sense of living fully. Ice Climbing, however, tends to not have a huge following. Even within the climbing community only a small subset of climbers will learn to climb ice and stick with it. For most it appears to be a novelty activity to do once, take some photos of and then never do again. Not for myself. Something about the aesthetics of it appeals to me. Swinging sharpened Ice tools and kicking serrated barbs of steel into walls of frozen water. Seeing layers of ice shatter and explode or feeling the ice tool make a satisfying “thunk” as it bites solidly from a perfect flick of the wrist. All ice is not made equal either. Time, weather and location can have a dramatic effect on the properties of the ice you will be climbing. The type of ice you climb in the morning can be completely different to the type of ice you climb that same evening. To rock jocks that have never been on ice I try to use this analogy, “Imagine going to your favorite granite rock climbing area only to discover when you get there that the rock has now changed to limestone with bands of gneiss running through it, and instead of a 5.10b crack you now have a 5.11a face climb. It’s that kind of flux that you have to be prepared for with ice” Or put simply by a friend of mine as we geared up at the base of a climb: “Ice Climbing is just badass, that’s it, everyone knows it” What follows are some accounts of the Ice Climbing trips I’ve been on in the past few months and what I’ve learned from those experiences. Mount Baker Seracs: Spring wrote about our experience at Mount Baker here: “Mount Baker: Ice Climbing“, so I won’t labor the details. I was really psyched to get out on glacier ice. From all my glacier experience the number one rule has always been to avoid going anywhere near crevasses but on this trip our goal was not only to find the deepest, darkest cracks in the glacier...
Arc’teryx Nuclei Hoody Review
Bottom Line: A versatile, packable, CoreLoft jacket. Perfect for belaying or as a midlayer. Face fabric (Arc’teryx Airetica) is water resistant but not waterproof so a hardshell is needed in a downpour, however, the Arc’teryx CoreLoft, unlike down, will insulate when wet as it retains its loft. I’d highly recommend it to others, another quality Arc’teryx product. How I chose it: Full disclosure, we are active members in a number of online communities, from nature conservancy and interest to outdoor equipment for enjoying the wild comfortably and safely. Arc’teryx is one of them. They wanted to say thanks for our continued support of their online communities by giving myself and Spring at Pebbleshoo a jacket. We chose the Nuclei Hoody. We had already been considering it as we already have down jackets, but they aren’t practical to use if the weather is forecast to be wet as down loses its insulation when soaked. The Nuclei uses Arc’teryx’ own Coreloft which retains it’s insulating properties even when wet. Belaying near Squamish Belaying near Leavenworth Returning from climbing Seracs at Mount Baker Observations since receiving and using it: If you’ve watched our video review above you’ll already have heard most of my observations regarding this Hoody. I love the included stuff sack for packing the jacket which also has a loop attached to it so that it can be clipped to a harness with a carabiner when climbing. It insulates really well. It’s warm. It fits well. I wear it everywhere. I have a coat rack at my apartment door and I don’t like clutter so I usually just have one or two jackets there that I put on when heading out. The Nuclei Hoody has replaced my old fleece Hoody as my go-to jacket. Pros: Packable: Compresses down really well Light: I don’t even notice it when I’m wearing it or have it clipped to my harness Fitted: The trim design is awesome, it doesn’t bunch up or crease when I have it on under a hard shell and a heavy backpack Vibrant: Personal choice, but I love Arc’teryx’ use of bright colors. For my photography the color of this jacket really stands out. Simple: There really isn’t anything I’d take away from this jacket. Cons and Areas to improve: Stuff sack could be improved with a couple of compression straps on the side to pack the Hoody down even smaller. I don’t like carrying around air. Zip or Velcro on the Stuff sack pocket: The pocket for the stuff sack does not seal, but the stuff sack can be removed. It would be nice to have the option of using that pocket to...
